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66-472: Corinna or Korinna ( Ancient Greek : Κόριννα , romanized :  Korinna ) was an ancient Greek lyric poet from Tanagra in Boeotia . Although ancient sources portray her as a contemporary of Pindar (born c.  518 BC ), not all modern scholars accept the accuracy of this tradition. When she lived has been the subject of much debate since the early twentieth century, proposed dates ranging from

132-537: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in

198-436: A Boeotian edition in the late third or early second century BC, and later Hellenistic and Roman texts of Corinna derived from this. This Boeotian edition was produced in a scholarly format, with titles for the poems; it may have also included accent marks and hypotheses , but is unlikely to have included line numbers. Corinna wrote in a literary dialect, which had features of her Boeotian vernacular , along with similarities to

264-422: A chorus of young women for a public occasion. West suggests that it was written as an introductory poem for Corinna's collection. Corinna's language is clear, simple, and generally undecorated, and she tends to use simple metrical schemes . Her poetry focuses more on the narrative than on intricate use of language. Her use of lyric poetry to tell mythic narratives is similar to that of Stesichorus. Corinna's poetry

330-413: A contemporary of Pindar , either having taught him, or been a fellow-pupil of Myrtis of Anthedon with him. Corinna was said to have competed with Pindar, defeating him in at least one poetry competition, though some sources claim five. Since the early twentieth century, scholars have been divided over the accuracy of the traditional chronology of Corinna's life. One of the first scholars to question this

396-435: A female audience. The circumstances in which Corinna's poetry was performed are uncertain, and have been the subject of much scholarly debate. At least some of her poetry was probably performed for a mixed-gender audience, though some may have been intended for a specifically female audience. Skinner suggests that Corinna's songs were composed for performance by a chorus of young girls in religious festivals, and were related to

462-472: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and

528-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in

594-497: A monument to her in the streets of the town – probably a statue – and a painting of her in the gymnasium . Tatian writes in his Address to the Greeks that Silanion had sculpted her. In the early Roman Empire , Corinna's poetry was popular. The earliest mention of Corinna is by the first-century BC poet Antipater of Thessalonica , who includes her in his selection of nine "mortal muses". Ovid gives his lover

660-566: A more positive light than in more common versions of the myths. Two of Corinna's most substantial fragments, the "Daughters of Asopus" and "Terpsichore" poems, demonstrate a strong interest in genealogy. This genealogical focus is reminiscent of the works of Hesiod , especially the Catalogue of Women , though other lost genealogical poetry is known from the archaic period – for instance by Asius of Samos and Eumelus of Corinth . The third major surviving fragment of Corinna's poetry, on

726-475: A more prominent role. Corinna's work has also been of interest to feminist literary historians as one of the few extant examples of ancient Greek women's poetry. Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into

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792-525: A patriarchal point of view, describing women's lives from a masculine perspective. Anne Klinck suggests that "a certain feminine irony is detectable" in Corinna's works, and John Heath argues that in the "Terpsichore" poem Corinna deliberately emphasises her position as a woman poet. Diane Rayor argues that although Corinna's poetry does not directly challenge patriarchal traditions, it is still "woman-identified", focusing on women's experiences and being written for

858-486: A personal enemy, an art at which Archilochus , the earliest known Greek lyric poet, excelled. The themes of Greek lyric include "politics, war, sports, drinking, money, youth, old age, death, the heroic past, the gods," and hetero- and homosexual love . In the 3rd century BC, the encyclopedic movement at Alexandria produced a canon of the nine melic poets : Alcaeus , Alcman , Anacreon , Bacchylides , Ibycus , Pindar , Sappho , Simonides , and Stesichorus . Only

924-543: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment

990-671: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek , and Koine may be classified as Ancient Greek in a wider sense. There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek

1056-564: A small sampling of lyric poetry from Archaic Greece , the period when it first flourished, survives. For example, the poems of Sappho are said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the Library of Alexandria , with the first book alone containing more than 1,300 lines of verse. Today, only one of Sappho's poems exists intact, with fragments from other sources that would scarcely fill a chapbook . Greek poetry meters are based on patterns of long and short syllables (in contrast to English verse, which

1122-414: A soloist or chorus to mark particular occasions. The symposium ("drinking party") was one setting in which lyric poems were performed. "Lyric" was sometimes sung to the accompaniment of either a string instrument (particularly the lyre or kithara ) or a wind instrument (most often the reed pipe called aulos ). Whether the accompaniment was a string or wind instrument, the term for such accompanied lyric

1188-609: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c.  300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as

1254-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and

1320-556: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of

1386-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected

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1452-644: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to

1518-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in

1584-438: Is determined by stress), and lyric poetry is characterized by a great variety of metrical forms. Apart from the shift between long and short syllables, stress must be considered when reading Greek poetry. The interplay between the metric "shifts", the stressed syllables and caesuras is an integral part of the poetry. It allows the poet to stress certain words and shape the meaning of the poem. There are two main divisions within

1650-400: Is nonetheless of interest as she is one of the few female poets from ancient Greece whose work survives. Corinna was from Tanagra in Boeotia . The Suda , a tenth-century encyclopedia, records that she was the daughter of Acheloodorus and Procratia, and was nicknamed Myia (Μυῖα, "the fly"). According to ancient tradition, she lived during the fifth century BC. She was supposed to have been

1716-641: Is often ironic or humorous in tone, in contrast with the serious tone of her Boeotian compatriot Pindar. Corinna's poetry is almost entirely concerned with myth. According to a story recounted by Plutarch in On the Glory of the Athenians , she considered myth the proper subject for poetry, rebuking Pindar for not paying sufficient attention to it. Pindar was said to have responded to this criticism by filling his next ode with mythical allusions, leading Corinna to advise him, "Sow with

1782-516: Is widely accepted by archeologists as a copy of Silanion's sculpture. Philologists continue to regard this attribution with what Thea S. Thorsen describes as "unwarranted scepticism". West, for instance, accepts that the Compiègne statuette is a copy of a fourth-century work, but suggests that it was not originally intended to depict Corinna, only gaining that association in the Roman period. Thorsen argues that

1848-698: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect

1914-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)

1980-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):

2046-490: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from

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2112-543: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs,   Greek lyric Lyric is one of three broad categories of poetry in classical antiquity , along with drama and epic , according to

2178-498: The ancient genre of partheneia . The poems may have been performed at cult celebrations in the places which appear in her poetry. Possible settings include the Mouseia at Thespiae , proposed by West, and at the festival of the Daedala at Plataea , suggested by Gabriele Burzacchini. Corinna was well-regarded by the people of ancient Tanagra, her hometown. Pausanias reports that there was

2244-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has

2310-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in

2376-612: The beginning of the fifth century to the late third century BC. Corinna's works survive only in fragments: three substantial sections of poems are preserved on second-century AD papyri from Egypt; several shorter pieces survive in quotations by ancient grammarians. They focus on local Boeotian legends , and are distinctive for their mythological innovations. Corinna's poetry often reworks well-known myths to include details not known from any other sources. Though respected in her hometown, Tanagra, and popular in ancient Rome, modern critics have often regarded her as parochial and dull; her poetry

2442-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West

2508-419: The contest between Mount Cithaeron and Mount Helicon, seems also to have been influenced by Hesiod, who also wrote an account of this myth. Marilyn B. Skinner argues that Corinna's poetry is part of the tradition of "women's poetry" in ancient Greece, though it differs significantly from Sappho's conception of that genre. She considers that although it was written by a woman, Corinna's poetry tells stories from

2574-423: The dead, exhort soldiers to valor, and offer religious devotion in the forms of hymns , paeans , and dithyrambs . Partheneia , "maiden-songs," were sung by choruses of maidens at festivals. Love poems praise the beloved, express unfulfilled desire, proffer seductions, or blame the former lover for a breakup. In this last mood, love poetry might blur into invective , a poetic attack aimed at insulting or shaming

2640-611: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of

2706-407: The ending of one of the mountain's songs, the gods voting on the winner of the contest, and the losing mountain, Helicon, throwing down a boulder in anger. The second poem preserved on this papyrus tells of the daughters of the river-god Asopus . It mostly consists of a prophet, Acraephen, telling Asopus how his daughters were abducted by the gods, and that they will go on to give birth to many heroes;

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2772-550: The example of ancient Greek women writers has been used to legitimise the writing of modern women; Corinna has been invoked in this way by Gaspara Stampa and Madeleine de Scudéry . In the nineteenth century, Corinna was still remembered as a poetic authority, Karl Otfried Müller presenting her as a preeminent ancient poet and citing the stories of her competition against Pindar. Modern critics have tended to dismiss Corinna's work, considering it dull. For instance, West describes Corinna as more gifted than most local poets, but lacking

2838-463: The following clarification: "'melic' is a musical definition, 'elegy' is a metrical definition, whereas 'iambus' refers to a genre and its characteristics subject matter. (...) The fact that these categories are artificial and potentially misleading should prompt us to approach Greek lyric poetry with an open mind, without preconceptions about what 'type' of poetry we are reading." Greek lyric poems celebrate athletic victories ( epinikia ) , commemorate

2904-516: The following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c.  1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c.  1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c.  800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c.  500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been

2970-566: The hand, not with the sack." Corinna's poetry concentrates on local legends, with poems about Orion , Oedipus , and the Seven against Thebes . Her "Orestes" is possibly an exception to her focus on Boeotian legends. Her poetry often reworks mythological tradition – according to Derek Collins, "the most distinctive feature of Corinna's poetry is her mythological innovation" – frequently including details which are otherwise unknown. These reworkings often present gods and heroes in

3036-556: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from

3102-472: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to

3168-531: The language of epic both in morphology and in her choice of words; Daniel Berman describes it as "epic written as Boeotian". If Corinna was a contemporary of Pindar, this use of the local vernacular as a literary language is archaic – though the earlier poets Alcman and Stesichorus wrote in literary dialects based on their own vernaculars, the fifth-century choral poets Pindar and Bacchylides both wrote in Doric despite it not being their local dialect. On

3234-423: The meters of ancient Greek poetry: lyric and non-lyric meters. "Lyric meters (literally, meters sung to a lyre ) are usually less regular than non-lyric meters. The lines are made up of feet of different kinds, and can be of varying lengths. Some lyric meters were used for monody (solo songs), such as some of the poems of Sappho and Alcaeus ; others were used for choral dances, such as the choruses of tragedies and

3300-499: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which

3366-474: The originality that would put her on the same level as Bacchylides or Pindar. Athanassios Vergados argues that Corinna's poor reception among modern critics is due to her focus on local Boeotian traditions rather than broader subject matter, giving her a reputation of parochialism and thus limited quality. More recently, critics have begun to see Corinna's poetry as engaging with Panhellenic mythical and literary traditions, rewriting them to give Boeotian characters

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3432-491: The orthography of her surviving poetry was not established until after the mid-fourth century. This is the most common view, with Martin Litchfield West and David A. Campbell among those who believe a late date for Corinna. Campbell concludes that a third-century date is "almost certain". The alternative view, accepting the traditional fifth-century date, is set forth by scholars such as Archibald Allen and Jiří Frel . If

3498-679: The other hand, if she is to be located closer to the Hellenistic period, parallels can be found in the poetry of Theocritus , who also used features of his native dialect in the Idylls . About forty fragments of Corinna's poetry survive, more than any ancient woman poet except for Sappho , though no complete poems of hers are known. The three most substantial fragments are preserved on pieces of papyrus discovered in Hermopolis and Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, dating to

3564-531: The papyrus ends with a highly fragmentary portion in which Asopus appears to be reconciled to his daughters' fate, and he responds "happily". The third substantial fragment of Corinna's poetry, preserved on a papyrus in the Sackler Library of the University of Oxford (P.Oxy. 2370), invokes the muse of dance and choral poetry, Terpsichore. It is usually thought to be from a partheneion , a kind of poem performed by

3630-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c.  1450 BC ) are in

3696-452: The pseudonym Corinna in his Amores , often believed to be a reference to the Tanagran poet. She is also named by Propertius as a model for Cynthia, and by Statius along with Callimachus , Lycophron , and Sophron . Alexander Polyhistor wrote a commentary on her work, and she was named as a tenth canonical lyric poet in a scholion on Dionysius Thrax . From the early modern period,

3762-440: The scheme of the "natural forms of poetry" developed by Goethe in the early nineteenth century. (Drama is considered a form of poetry here because both tragedy and comedy were written in verse in ancient Greece.) Culturally, Greek lyric is the product of the political, social and intellectual milieu of the Greek polis ("city-state"). Much of Greek lyric is occasional poetry , composed for public or private performance by

3828-534: The sculpture was always intended as an image of Corinna, noting that the figure is shown with five scrolls that match the five books of poetry attributed to Corinna in antiquity. Corinna, like Pindar, wrote choral lyric poetry  – as demonstrated by her invocation of Terpsichore , the Muse of dance and chorus, in one of her fragments. According to the Suda , she wrote five books of poetry. Her works were collected in

3894-471: The second century AD; many of the shorter fragments survive in citations by grammarians interested in Corinna's Boeotian dialect. Two fragments of Corinna's poetry are preserved on the same papyrus (P.Berol. 13284), now in the collection of the Berlin State Museums . The first of these tells the story of a singing contest between the mountains Cithaeron and Helicon . The surviving portion includes

3960-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies

4026-433: The traditional date is correct, the lack of ancient reference to Corinna before the first century, and the later orthography, could both be explained by her being of only local interest before the Hellenistic period . According to this theory, when she was rediscovered and popularised in the Hellenistic period her poetry would have been re-spelled into contemporary Boeotian orthography, as her original fifth-century orthography

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4092-611: The victory odes of Pindar ." The lyric meters' families are the Ionic , the Aeolic (based on the choriamb , which can generate varied kinds of verse, such as the glyconian or the Sapphic stanza ), and the Dactylo-epitrite. The Doric choral songs were composed in complex triadic forms of strophe, antistrophe, and epode, with the first two parts of the triad having the same metrical pattern, and

4158-467: Was Edgar Lobel , who in 1930 concluded that there is no reason to believe she predated the orthography used on the Berlin papyrus, on which fragments of two of her poems are preserved. The debate over Corinna's date has dominated scholarship since, and the evidence remains inconclusive. Sceptics of the traditional chronology argue that there is no ancient mention of Corinna before the first century BC, and that

4224-639: Was melic poetry (from the Greek word for "song" melos ). Lyric could also be sung without any instrumental accompaniment. This latter form is called meter and it is recited rather than sung, strictly speaking. Modern surveys of "Greek lyric" often include relatively short poems composed for similar purposes or circumstances that were not strictly " song lyrics " in the modern sense, such as elegies and iambics . The Greeks themselves did not include elegies nor iambus within melic poetry, since they had different metres and different musical instruments. The Edinburgh Companion to Ancient Greece and Rome offers

4290-475: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,

4356-529: Was too unfamiliar to a third-century audience. An apparent terminus ante quem is established by the second-century AD theologian Tatian , who says in his Address to the Greeks that the fourth-century sculptor Silanion made a portrait-statue of Corinna. A Roman-era copy of a fourth-century statue in the Musée Vivenel in Compiègne , France, is identified by an inscription on the base as depicting Corinna, and

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